Ranks: Here are the world’s largest stock exchanges by market cap

According to the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), in 2012 the global equity market capitalization grew 15.1% to about US$55 trillion, even though the volume of transactions dropped by 22%. The best performance in 2012 was observed in the Americas (+17.2%) followed by Asia-Pacific (+15.4%) and EAME (+11.6%).

Here are the largest domestic equity market capitalizations at year-end 2012 and 2011:

Brazil’s BM&F/Bovespa was the 14th largest, with $1.227 trillion in market cap.